I moved to Australia as an international student in 2009. I am originally from Pakistan but grew up in the Middle East. Questioning my religion is something I have done for as long as I can remember. While I don’t come from an extremely conservative family, they do identify as Muslim and claim to do the best they can to be a good Muslim which I did for a long time myself. Recently however, I realised that I was beginning to get frustrated and started getting into arguments with friends or family on little things like talking about getting a tattoo, trying alcohol, eating non-halal food. When you’re a Muslim, the word ‘haram’ hits you like a huge insult. That’s haram!! Everything that I felt like doing was haram. My first response was no - God doesn’t hate me because I got a tattoo, God doesn’t hate me because I drink alcohol responsibly, God doesn’t hate me because I am a good person and I try to be honest and do the right thing for people, for the environment, for the community, as much as it is possible. I found some peace in separating religion and God and came up with my own theories of Islam and Allah. But I learnt with time that that wasn’t Islam and what I am doing can’t be classified as being Muslim. Therefore, to be completely honest to myself I had to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer Muslim, if I ever was. I read a few different translations of the Quran with a very open mind as an attempt to make rational meanings from the text but I just couldn’t. In fact, I got annoyed over how a book, that defines the way of life for a massive religious community, can be so vague and open the discretionary interpretation of the growing number of religious factions within islam. And I couldn’t understand how the very clearly written passages around misogyny, hate, homophobia etc. can be interpreted any other way than they are written. I have gotten in various arguments with friends over this. My family doesn’t know I’m not a Muslim anymore and think that my questioning will just stop one day and I’ll come back to the “right path” one day.